Be My Always
by alwaysbeckle
Summary: Could a day out with Castle help Beckett realise what she truly feels for him, or will a certain doctor stand in the way. Changed summary as per requested.
1. Chapter 1

It was around 11am on Saturday, for the first time in a while Beckett had the weekend off, well technically she was on call. As soon as she heard her phone ringing her heart sank, she was really looking forward to having the weekend off. She quickly got off the lounge and walked over to where her phone was charging on her bedside table.

"Beckett," she answered without looking at the caller id.

"I heard that you had the day off and I was hoping, well wondering really if you'd like to go grab a burger or something?

Beckett didn't know what was weirder, the fact that castle sounded so nervous, or that he was asking her instead of just showing up at her door unannounced and telling her that they were hanging out.

"Sure, I'd like that; I didn't really have any other plans. At least this way I'll be getting out of my apartment."

"What no plans with Dr Motorcycle Boy?"

That's when it hit her, the reason why he'd called instead of just showing up, now that she's thinking about it, ever since he found out about her relationship with Josh a few months ago he'd been showing up less, choosing instead to call her.

"No, he went to Haiti for another doctors without borders mission," she didn't mean to sound as upset as she did, but after the last time he'd left for a mission he had promised that she would come first and he wouldn't go on any more. 2 days ago he called her up from the airport and tells her he's going to Haiti, and that he'd see her in 3 weeks.

"Do you want to talk about it? I know it's none of my business, but you sound upset." Sure, Castle was jealous of Josh, his girlfriend just so happened to be the women he was madly in love with, but if Josh made her happy, then he would suck it up and help her through it.

"Maybe later, how about we go to Remy's, I feel like a burger and shake."

"Ok, see you in 10."

10 minutes later they were sitting in their usual booth, both Castle and Beckett are waiting for their orders to come out.

"So do you want to talk about it?" honestly she did, but she doesn't know how to say these things and not sound needy, or weak. People may tell her that it's fine to show your vulnerable side once and a while, but every time she does that she gets hurt.

"He left, no warning just a call while he was waiting for his plane. I know it's not my say, I can't tell him to stay, but he promised, I would've been fine if he had told me you know? But he didn't and that's why I broke up with him."

"I know telling you this will have no impact on you at all, but you know every once in a while you can call me or show up at my house and tell me whatever you want, being vulnerable isn't a weakness you know, it's a sign of strength and more importantly it shows courage. I'm not going to lie to you what Josh did was a dick move," if it was anyone else Beckett would've caused harm to them, but she knows that Castle only has her best intentions at heart. "I know you really liked him and breakups are never easy, so if you need anything I am here for you. Even if I don't know what to say, you can just talk and I'll listen.

"Thanks, I know I'm not the most open person, but I'm glad that I have you in my life." That was a big step for Beckett, if anyone other than Castle had heard that they would think it was no big deal, but for someone as heavily guarded as Kate Beckett to admit something like that would be hard and he'd never felt better in his life.

The rest of the meal went relatively normal, some light banter and stolen glances, mixed with stealing chips of each other's plates while they weren't looking. They had just finished their meals, castle had payed and they were walking out of Remy's when a car pulled up in front of them. A tall, skinny man gets out of the driver's seat and flashes them a smile. "Good afternoon Mr Castle, Ms Beckett." The man, whose name tag read George, walked around and opened the door for them to slide in, never letting the smile leave his face.

"What's this about Castle?" Beckett whispered to Castle.

"I told you that I know me telling you that you can open up to me isn't going to have an impact on you, so I called George and organised for him to take us wherever you want, to take your mind of he who should not be named."

"Thank you, but you really don't have to do this, really I'm fine." Seriously, Castle thought, when will she realise that I don't have to do this but I want to.

"No you're not Kate, I can tell you aren't. I don't need to do these things, I want to. I can tell that this is hurting you, and that kills me. I hate seeing you like this and feeling helpless, so I'm going to take you to wherever you want to go and we're going to have a great time, and at the end of the day if you feel no better, I give you permission to hit me." That got her to chuckle a little, trust Castle to mix something so emotional with a lousy joke, but if she was being honest with herself this is just what she needed, maybe spending the day with her best friend will make her feel better.

"Ok, deal."

"Where to first?"

"This is fantastic, how'd you find this place?" They were at a little pastry place not too far from the loft, and Castle was mentally kicking himself for living so close and not knowing about this place.

"I was having one of the universal bad days that everyone experiences once in a while, where you wake up and you feel off. Everything and everyone gets on your nerves quicker. Anyway, I was having a bad day and decided I needed to take a walk, before I knew it, I was outside this place and I was starving. I had been walking for who knows how long and I just found my way here."

"If this is the kind of thing you find while walking, remind me to do it more often."

After spending a while eating an assortment of different types of pastries, they made their way outside. "Do you want to skip the car and walk to the loft? We could watch a movie, play a game of laser tag, whatever you want." Truth be told Castle was grasping at straws, he was having fun and didn't want the day to end, they're finally making progress and he wants to see how far he can go, without pushing too hard.

"I think after the amount of food we ate, we're going to need to play a game or two of laser tag." Beckett was having fun, she may have been dating Josh but she truly only ever loved one person, it may have been a cowardly act, but she wasn't ready to admit her feelings after he left during the summer. Over the past month, though she came to realise how much he'd grown since they first met. Today proved it, she was totally and utterly in love with Richard Castle. Today is the day she would stop taking steps back and see where life took her, and if that happened to be with castle she couldn't complain.

"Fantastic, we have the loft to ourselves, mothers out of town and Alexis is staying at a friend's house for the weekend. I just got shutters for the windows, you can help me test them out, make the laser tag experience that much better."

They made their way back to the loft relatively quickly, they had already played one game of laser tag and were currently in the midst of their second. Beckett was crouched over behind the piano, waiting for the perfect moment to come out and attack. Castle had won the first round after cheating, so she had demanded a rematch, she could she the silhouette of his body moving around, and the flashing lights of his jacket and goggles only slightly obstructed by his hiding spot. Now or never she thought, she slowly crept over to where he was 'hiding' and pounced, unfortunately they both had the same idea and she was thrown back, landing with a thump, Castle on top of her. They were inches apart, faces slightly illuminated by the lights on their goggles, their eyes locked and they stayed staring at each other slowly inching closer together.

"Sorry," Castle whispers, suddenly realising how close they were. He sat up and went to turn the lights on. ' _How could I be so stupid, she just broke up with Josh.'_ it wasn't until he turned around that he realised that Beckett had followed him, it was too late though, he collided with her and she stumbled, without thinking about it his hand instinctively went for her hips to steady her.

"Don't," she simply stated.

"I'm sorry, reflexes."

She shook her head as soon as he took his hand off of her, "No, don't apologise. You were right."

"About what?"

"When you told me I was hiding in relationships with men I don't love, I've realised over the past month what to others seemed so obvious. I really liked Josh, but that's not enough, I didn't love him and dragging him along because I was too scared to see what was right in front of me. That's one of the reasons I was so quick to break up with him." She spoke so quickly he didn't have time to process it before she was wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him with as much passion as she could, they broke apart when the need for oxygen outweighed the need for each other. "The truth is Castle, there's only one person that I want, and that person is you."

"I feel the same, I really do, but you just broke up with someone, I don't want to feel as if I'm taking advantage of you."

"You're not taking advantage of me Castle, I may have just broken up with Josh but it's always been you Castle. I want this Castle, we've waited for a long time, I know you're not the type of person to take advantage of people, I don't want to wait any longer." It didn't even take Castle a second after Beckett had finished talking before his lips were on hers in the most passionate kiss either of them had ever experienced.

"What now."

 **A/N I know that the fight between Beckett and Castle, where he says she hides in relationships was at the end of the season, but for the sake of this story it's toward the begging to the middle of the season**

 **This isn't a one shot I have a rough outline for what I want to write so stay tuned for more.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Sorry for the delay, I've been heaps busy with school trying to get good marks for senior selection and I couldn't figure out how the story continued. I know people say this all the time, but I promise I will be quicker with updates. Enjoy!**

The next couple of months went by quickly for Castle and Beckett, they had a few challenging cases, but mainly they were open and shut ones. They were off to a great start to their relationship, no problems at all, but Beckett couldn't let go of the thought that something terrible was going to happen. She was sitting in the bay in his kitchen just watching him, _'how could someone as messed up as me deserve someone like him?'_ no matter how much she told herself that she was crazy, she kept having thoughts like this.

She was bought out of her thoughts by her phone, checking the caller ID she saw that it was Montgomery. "Beckett," she answered. "Kate, I need you and Rick to come down to the station ASAP, this isn't something I can tell you over the phone." Shit, her mind kept going to worse case scenarios, had something happened to her dad or to Castle's mum, or Alexis? "Sir?" "I'll explain everything when you get here." And with that he hung up and she was left staring at the black screen of her phone.

"What's wrong?" he'd looked up from whatever he was watching/reading on his tablet to see her distressed face staring at her phone.

"Montgomery called, want us to go down to the precinct. He seemed really serious, he used our first names something has to be wrong." She was starting to really stress out, what if something bad had really happened, she and Castle had finally gotten together and everything had been perfect, must the other shoe really drop?

"Hey, whatever it is we will get through it together, always." He got up off the seat that he was sitting on and walked over to Beckett, put his hand on her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. "I promise you if anything bad has happened that I will be your rock, and I hope you will be mine." "Always."

This is the day they'd been regretting, 3XK had come back and killed 3 more people. As soon as they had gotten to the precinct Montgomery had called them into his office, shut the door behind them and told them to take a seat, he had told them about the three murders that had occurred over the 3 previous nights and how they had been killed in the same style as all of Tyson's previous victims.

"Three! Why is this the first time we've been told about this!?"

"They were in 3 different jurisdictions, no one put it together until the 3rd body was found and they searched the database for similar MO's."

"I don't care whose jurisdiction they're in I want all the bodies sent to Lanie and we get full control of the investigations." There was no chance in hell she was letting anyone else run this investigation, Tyson had targeted her team and she was damn sure they were going to catch the bastard.

"I've already talked to the commissioner, he thinks it's best that your team gets the case because of your connections with it, his only condition was that if any of you do something stupid because you're too close to it he will give them straight back."

"Don't worry Sir, none of us want our behaviour to potentially cause him to be set free."

They'd left Montgomery's office and Castle had gone straight to the break room, while Beckett informed the rest of the team. Ryan took the news almost as bad as Castle, as she had expected, each of them blamed themselves for the fact that Tyson had gotten away. After ensuring that Ryan was ok Beckett made her way over to the break room, she saw Castle sitting there just sitting staring off into nothing as he sipped his coffee.

"Hey, are you ok?" She took the seat next to him and rested her hand on his knee. She was his rock, just like they promised each other this morning.

"It's my fault, I should have figured it out sooner, I keep thinking that if I had he'd be locked up and no more innocent people would be dead, their deaths are on me."

"Listen to me," she waited for him to look up at her before she continued, "This isn't your fault, none of us realised until it was too late, he played all of us there was nothing we could do about it then, but this time we know who he is and there is no escape, we will catch him and he'll be locked up for a long time." He reached over and gave her hand resting on his knee a squeeze. "Thank you." "Always."

"Let's go, we've got an investigation to do," Beckett stood up, took Castles hand and helped him up. They walked out of the break room and headed straight to the murder board where Esposito and Ryan were already waiting.

"Alright, let's start, 3 victims 3 nights. The first victim, Nicole Martin 29 years old, was found in her apartment 3 nights ago by her mother, the second victim, Tracy Wallis 27 years old, was found in the back room of her dance studio 2 nights ago by the janitor, and the final victim, Savannah Evans also 27 years old was found in the hotel she was staying in by the maid. Each killed the same way and have all the same characteristics as Tyson's other victims. Esposito, you and Ryan go and re interview everyone and Castle and I will go down and see if Lanie has anything for us."

"Hey Lanie, got anything for us?"

"Not much at the moment, my preliminary cause of death for all three victims is strangulation with a green and white rope, no DNA or fingerprints found on any of them." Although none of that will help the case much, it confirms that they were killed by 3XK.

"Thanks Lanie, call me when you've finished the autopsies."

"Kate hold up," Beckett turns to castle and tells him she'll catch up to her and walks over to Lanie.

"What's up?"

"How's Castle doing? I know this one's tough for him."

"He keeps saying he's fine, but it's really affecting him. He blames himself, he thinks that it's his fault that these girls are dead because didn't figure it out sooner."

"You'll get through this together, you always do."

"Yeah, thanks."

It was 12 o'clock before they got home that night, the investigation hadn't really gone anywhere so Montgomery sent them all home. They walked into the door of Castle loft, toed their shoes off and went over and sat on the lounge, it had been a long day and they both needed sleep but neither of them felt like sleeping.

"You ok?" Beckett asked this question 100 times and each time got the same answer, "I'm Fine." This time she wasn't taking that as an answer. "No you're not, I can see how this is affecting you, I'm here as your partner and your rock, it's not your fault, none of us figured it out, you did and thanks to you we know who we're searching for and we will get him."

"I didn't figure it out soon enough though, these people are dead because I wasn't quick enough to stop Jerry." Beckett saw how much this hurt him and wanted so badly to fix it.

"It's not your fault, you're not the one holding the rope and strangling innocent people, he is. I know what it feels like to believe that people are dead because of you so you have to believe me when I tell you this, it's not your fault, it's the fault of the people killing them and it's your job to get justice for them." She leans over kisses him and rests her head against his chest. "I'm here for you Rick, always."

 **Again, sorry for the long wait, enjoy and make sure to review.**


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